Maybe it all began when, as a young teen, she hiked the forests around Mt. Rainier with her friends.  Certainly it set the stage for Janet McLennan's long and remarkable career path in a life dedicated to protecting and preserving our environmental resources.  Indeed, Janet has provided leadership in virtually every notable Pacific Northwest natural resource policy arena in the last half of the 20th century and beyond.

 

Born in 1926, Janet Watts grew up as an only child in a downtown Tacoma apartment.  She graduated from the University of Oregon with honors in English in 1948 and went on to attend the prestigious Radcliffe Course in Publishing Procedures, an intensive summer program begun in 1947 that has since become the preeminent training opportunity in the publishing world.  This may have helped her land a job in New York City as an assistant college editor at Mademoiselle Magazine. The following year, she married Bill McLennan in Tacoma and moved with him to Washington D.C..  There she worked for the Library of Congress and attended the McCarthy hearings.  Of course this stimulated her interest in politics and law.  But having three children took priority for a few years.